MILWAUKEE—Arizona Republican Gov. Jan Brewer mocked the Obama administration’s assertion Saturday that the border is more secure than ever.

“It’s Jay Leno comedy every other week,” she told POLITICO during an interview at the National Governors Association meeting here, alluding to the president’s scheduled trip this week to both Phoenix and the talk show host’s couch.

Brewer said her Yuma border is “pretty secure” but “Tucson is a nightmare.”

“Arizona is the gateway, and the metrics are all wrong,” she said. “We don’t even know who is coming across. We don’t know how many times they’re coming back and forth, when they’re not counting the ones that are turned back around.

“Everybody that you talk to has different numbers: Border Patrol … Homeland Security … the sheriffs,” she added. “It’s the drug cartels that we live with … the drop houses, the extortion, the sex-slavery industry, the gangs fighting one another.”

The governor said “the frustration level has only increased” among Arizonans since she signed Senate Bill 1070 into law in 2010.

“How many times do people have to say, ‘secure our borders,’ and be rebuffed?” she said.

Brewer said she’s been in touch with the Arizona House delegation and expects grassroots conservative activists to pressure members across the country during the August recess not to get behind a comprehensive immigration bill that includes amnesty.

“It’s not going to pass the way it came out of the Senate, and I have serious reservations if it’s going to pass in any form in the House because they’ve got the cart before the horse,” she said. “We’re not going to live through 1986 once again, where President Reagan – my hero – gave amnesty and said our borders would be secured and it didn’t take. It didn’t happen.”

Brewer called on Congress Saturday to pass a standalone border security bill before getting to everything else. She wants a commission or board comprising border-state governors, border patrol leaders and local sheriffs to agree on metrics for what would constitute a secure border.

“Border security absolutely has to come first,” she said. “That’s got to be done first because I don’t think the general public is going to support anything that’s done until the border is secured.

“If we get the metrics and we all agree what it is that we all want, we can come to a conclusion and get it done,” she added. “Then we can deal with what it is that we need to do in order to resolve all these other issues.”

Brewer stressed that she recognizes the need to address the bigger problems of how to deal with the children of those who enter the country illegally and to provision enough visas to staff jobs in hospitality and construction.

She also kept open the door to running again next year. She completed Janet Napolitano’s term when she became Secretary of Homeland Security and won a full term in 2010. The state constitution limits a governor to two terms, and she believes that the fraction of the first should not count.

“As the incumbent, there’s a little bit of question,” she said. “Some people say that they don’t believe that I can run. I of course have lawyers telling me that there is a belief at least on their legal reading that I can. And as an incumbent I feel like I’ve got plenty of time. People know who I am. I haven’t made that decision yet.”

Brewer, 68, suggested that she will hold off on making a decision until next year.

“Every time I’ve ever ran I’ve usually run and announced like in February or something, so I’m not in a big rush,” she said. “If I don’t run for reelection, maybe another door will open.”